(FROM THE GERMAN OF TIEDGE.)
Day is exiled from the bowers of Twilight;
Leaf and flower are drooping in the wood;
And the stars, as on a dark-stained skylight,
Glass their ancient glory in the flood.
Let me here, where nightwinds through the yew sing,
Where the moon is chary of her beams,
Consecrate an hour to mournful musing
Over Man and Man’s delirious dreams.
Pines and yews! envelope me in deeper,
Dunner shadow, sombre as the grave,
While with moans, as of a troubled sleeper,
Gloomily above my head ye wave!
Let mine eye look down from hence on yonder
Battle-plain, which Night in pity dulls--
Let my sad imagination ponder
Over Kunnersdorf,[1] that Place of Skulls!
Dost thou re-illume these wastes, O Summer?
Hast thou raised anew thy trampled bowers?
Will the wild bee come again a hummer
Here, within the houses of thy flowers?
Can thy sunbeams light, thy mild rains water
This Aceldema, this _human_ soil,
Since that dark day of redundant slaughter
When the blood of men flowed here like oil?
Ah, yes! Nature, and Thou, God of Nature,
Ye are ever bounteous!--Man alone,
Man it is whose frenzies desolate your
World, and make it in sad truth his own!
Here saw Frederick fall his bravest warriors--
Master of _thy_ World, thou wert too great!
Heaven had need to stablish curbing-barriers
’Gainst thine inroads on the World of Fate!
O, could all thy coronals of splendour
Dupe thy memory of that ghastly day?
Could the Muses, could the Graces[2] render
Smooth and bright a corse-o’ercovered way?
No! the accusing blood-gouts ever trickle
Down each red leaf of thy chaplet-crown!
Men fell here, as corn before the sickle,
Fell, to aggrandise thy false renown!
Here the veteran drooped beside the springald.
Here sank Strength and Symmetry in line--
Here crushed Hope and gasping Valour mingled,
And, Destroyer, the wild work was thine!
What and wherefore is this doom funereal?
Whence this Tide of Being’s flow and ebb?
Why rends Destiny the fine material
Of Existence’s divinest web?
Vainly ask we!--Dim age calls to dim age--
Answer, save an echo, cometh none--
_Here_ stands Man, of Life in Death an image,
_There_, invisibly, The Living One!
Storm-clouds lour and muster in the Distance--
While, begirt with wrecks by sea and land,
Time, upon the far shore of Existence,
Counts each wavedrop swallowed by the sand.
Generation chases generation,
Downbowed by the same tremendous yoke--
No cessation, and no explication--
Birth--_Life_--Death;--the Stillness--_Flash_--and Smoke!
Here, then, Frederick, formidable Sovereign!
Here in presence of these whitened bones,
Swear at length to cherish Peace, and govern
So, that Men may learn to reverence Thrones!
O! repudiate bloodbought fame, and hearken
To the myriad witness-voicéd Dead,
Ere the Sternness[3] shall lay down to darken
In the Silentness[4] thy crownless head!
Shudder at the dire phantasmagory
Of the Slain who perished here by thee,
And abhor all future wreaths of glory
Gathered from the baleful cypress-tree!
Lofty souls disdain or dread the laurel--
_Hero_ is a poor exchange for _Man_;
_Adders lurk in green spots_: such the moral
Taught by History since her school began.
Cæsar slain, the victim of his trophies,
Bayazeed[5] expiring in his cage,
All the Cæsars, all the sabre-Sophies,
Preach the same sad homily each age.
One drugged winecup dealt with Alexander,
And his satraps scarce had shared afresh
Half the empires of the World-Commander,
Ere the charnel-worms had shared his flesh.
Though the rill roll down from Life’s green mountain
Bright through festal dells of youthful days,
Soon the waters of that glancing fountain
In the Vale of Years must moult its rays.
There the pilgrim, on the bridge that, bounding
Life’s domain, frontiers the wolds of Death,
Startled, for the first time hears resounding
From Eternity a Voice which saith--
“ALL WHICH IS NOT PURE SHALL MELT AND WITHER--
LO! THE DESOLATOR’S ARM IS BARE,
AND WHERE MAN IS, TRUTH SHALL TRACE HIM THITHER,
BE HE CURTAINED ROUND WITH GLOOM OR GLARE.”